Heartache and Hope: Heartache Duet Book One

by Jay McLean

I’m too humiliated to look at him as I scrub, scrub, scrub. “What?”

  “Weenus,” he repeats. “That bit of loose skin on an elbow is called a weenus.”

  “It is not!” I tell him, inspecting his elbow closer, making sure I got everything.

  “It is. It’s called a weenus.”

  “Stop saying weenus.”

  He laughs. “Can I have my weenus back now?”

  I release his arm and wipe my chin, then finally look over at him. He’s rotating his shoulder as if he’d been in the same position for hours. I look at my watch. “Oh, my God, Connor!” I practically squeal. “You let me drool all over your weenus for three hours?!”

  He busts out a laugh. “Say it again but whisper it seductively.”

  “Shut up!” I laugh out, then look out his window. It’s nothing but trees. “Where the hell are we?”

  “I don’t know,” he says, looking around.

  “Wait. Did you bring me here to murder me?”

  He smacks his lips together. “You know, I left my shovel at home, so no, at least not today.”

  I take a calming breath, try to regroup. “What the hell happened?”

  “I don’t know,” he says with a shrug. “You were fast asleep by the time we got to school, I didn’t have it in me to wake you, so I just drove and found this turnoff and… yeah, I’m going to have to use the navigator to get home.”

  I take a better look around us. We’re in an empty parking lot with only a few spots, surrounded by trees. And because my window doesn’t work, I open my door and listen. The sun’s out, the birds are chirping, and somewhere in the distance, there’s a stream of water. It’s kind of beautiful. I look back at Connor, who’s focused on a book between the steering wheel and his lap.

  “What are you reading?” I ask.

  “College essay prep,” he sighs out, closing it and tossing it in the makeshift backseat. “It’s so overwhelming.”

  I nod. “I know. Trevor’s forcing me to apply.”

  He smiles, but there’s a hint of sadness in his eyes, and I know where it’s coming from. We try not to talk about anything beyond now, but we both know what’s ahead. At some point, we’ll have to deal with it.

  I ask, “Have you or Coach Sykes or your agent heard any more?”

  He shakes his head. “No. Besides that one guy from Duke, nothing. Ross, my agent, thinks I might need more time. He says it’s not because I don’t have the skill, it’s just… I haven’t had the exposure.”

  “So, what does that mean?”

  Connor shrugs. “I’ll probably get a walk-on at a decent college, but it won’t be a D1. At least not yet. He’s hoping if I work hard enough freshman year, more options will open up for me.” He adjusts so he’s on his side, facing me completely. “What about you? Where are you thinking of applying?”

  “I don’t really know,” I murmur. “And I don’t even know what Trevor’s game plan is. Like, yeah, I get accepted somewhere and then what? I move Mom into the dorms with me? Or I leave her?” I shake my head, my cheeks puffing with my exhale. “It doesn’t make sense.”

  “Maybe he’s just giving you options,” he suggests.

  I sigh. “There are no options for me, Connor. As soon as I graduate, I become my mother’s keeper.”

  “Is that what you want?”

  I stare out through the windshield, then suck in a breath. “It’s what she needs,” I whisper. And it’s true. Because as much as I try to ignore it, she’s getting worse, and I don’t know how to fix it.

  “That’s not what I asked, Ava.”

  I straighten my features and turn to him, my hand going to his hair. “Are you going back to school?”

  “Are you going to answer my question?”

  “No.”

  “Then no.”

  A grin tugs at my lips. “You want to go for a walk?”

  We walk through the thick brush, listening for the sounds of the water stream. “Is it weird that I always look around for dead bodies when I’m walking through bushes and trails?” I ask.

  “Not weird at all,” he says sarcastically.

  We walk for a good fifteen minutes before we reach a clearing, and the sight that greets us is nothing less than spectacular. The clear skies reflect off the clear blue water of the calm lake, not a wave in sight.

  “You think it’ll be cold?” I ask, standing on the water’s edge with him.

  Connor squats down and runs his hand through the water, then comes up shaking his head. “It’s surprisingly warm,” he says, then looks up at me, his eyebrows raised. “You want to go for a swim?”

  “In what?”

  “The water, dummy.”

  Smartass. “I mean, wearing what?”

  “I vote nothing.”

  “I veto your nothing vote.”

  He laughs, eyeing me. “Well, isn’t your underwear the same as a bikini?”

  I chew on my lip, nervous. Technically yes, but even if I were standing in a bikini in front of him, I’d still feel self-conscious. “Turn around.”

  His eyebrows lift. “Why?”

  “Because I said so.”

  He sighs but complies.

  I take a moment to breathe, gather my courage. I slip off my shoes and socks first, and then my blouse and skirt. Then I throw them to the side of him, so he’s sure of what I’m doing. As soon as he sees the pile of my clothes, he starts stripping out of his own. With my thumb between my teeth, I watch his every move, entranced. It’s as if he was born to remove his shirt the way he does, his back muscles flexing, and then he unbuckles his belt, and my mouth goes dry. He drops his pants to his ankles and then kicks his feet to remove them altogether. “Can I turn around now?”

  “No.”

  I take a few steps forward until I’m right behind him. Reaching up, both hands start at his shoulders, then down his back. I marvel at the way his head droops forward, the way his muscles ripple beneath my palms. I kiss the spot between his shoulder blades, his whisper of my name doing nothing to deter me from closing the gap between us, my front to his back. I reach around, my hands on his bare chest, and then down, down, down, to each dip of his abs. I close my eyes, trace each one, and then move lower and lower. “Ava…” He spins in my arms, so quick I shriek a little. “You’re so fucking bad,” he whispers in my ear, his arousal pressed against my stomach. I bite down on my lip, crane my neck to allow him to kiss me there, his heated hands on my bare back. He moves up with one hand, fingers curling in my hair, gently pulling, forcing me to throw my head back. His mouth is on my collarbone and then on my chest, my breast. He bites down on the top of my bra, tugging just enough that I feel the air against my nipple. He makes a sound from deep in his throat before capturing my mouth with his, warm and wet and open—just for me. With one hand in my hair, the other lowers, curls against the curve of my ass. “So fucking bad,” he murmurs. And then he’s lifting me off the ground, my legs instinctively going around his waist. Our most intimate parts connect in the most painstakingly perfect way. He grips my thighs as our kiss deepens, our desperation revealed in the sounds we make, the heat emitting between us.

  Charged.

  Electric.

  Magic.

  I writhe against him, searching for more.

  “Ava,” he groans, pulling back.

  I suck in breath after breath, needing the oxygen, but needing him more.

  His gaze drops to my breasts, rising and falling, frantic and frenzied. “I’m about to…” He clears his throat, then nuzzles my neck. “I’m so fucking close to…” Then he laughs. “We need to cool the fuck down.”

  I nod, eyelids heavy, hands going to the back of his head.

  “You ready to go in?”

  “Carry me?”

  He rears back, his eyes holding mine. “Always, Ava.” And I know what he’s saying without saying it—he’ll not just carry me physically, but metaphorically, too. He’ll carry the heavy weight that comes with all my burdens. Always.

  The wa
ter is cooler on our bodies than we expected, but we adjust quickly. “If you could be anything in the world, what would it be?” he asks, circling me while I wade around the shallow water.

  “Easy. True crime fact checker. No, wait! I’d host my own podcast. Or, like, make YouTube videos, but without me in them. Maybe just my voice. I like my voice.”

  “You do have a nice voice,” he says, stopping in front of me to hold me to him. I instinctively wrap myself around him. He adds, “But you’d definitely get more views if you showed your face.”

  “You think?”

  “Ava, I’m a guy with working eyes. Yes.”

  “Do you think guys would—you know—over me?” I joke.

  He laughs. “Also, yes. But I don’t like to think about that.”

  “If I get enough views, I could possibly make an income from it.”

  “Possibly,” he says, amusing my random thoughts.

  “Maybe I should get a boob job,” I murmur, looking down at my breasts.

  He rolls his eyes. “Your boobs are fine, Ava.”

  “Just fine?” I pout.

  He kisses the top of each breast. “They’re perfect.”

  “Tell me when you fell in love with basketball,” I ask him, my chest to his back while he piggybacks me through the water so we can explore what looks like a cave.

  He shakes out his hair, flicking droplets all around him. “I don’t really know. There wasn’t a specific defining moment. I remember being around twelve and… I mean, I didn’t really know how well I’d played, but apparently one of the recruits from FSU was there, and he spoke to Dad after the game, told him that I had ‘real potential.’” He turns us around so I can climb onto the rocky embankment covered by a low cliff edge. I sit on the edge, listen to him speak. “I swear to God, Dad told everyone about that conversation, even the lady at the gas station on the way home. He was so damn proud.” He pulls himself up to sit next to me, his knees bent, elbows resting on them. The sun beats down, making his eyes as blue as the lake in front of us. He smiles when he turns to me, his shoulders lifting. “So… I don’t know. I think, for me, it was never about my love for basketball so much as it was about my dad’s love for me.”

  I hold his arm to me, rest my head on his shoulder. “So… you do it all for your dad?”

  He kisses the top of my head. “Kind of like how you do everything for your mom, right?”

  We’re farther in the narrow cave, still exposed to anyone in the lake, but hidden away enough that we’d see them first. We spent the first few minutes exploring, finding rocks strong enough to carve our names on the underside of the cliff. I glance at him, at the way his brow dips in concentration as he works on the middle stroke of the letter A. So far, he’s written Connor 4 A, and it’s so sweet and innocent and brings to mind my own innocent insecurities. “Connor?”

  “Ava?” he responds, not looking away from his task.

  “Why don’t you want to have sex with me?”

  He drops the rock he’d been using, then curses and picks it back up. He continues the middle stroke, digging deeper and deeper.

  “It’s just, you’ve had the chance. You’ve had me in your bed, and me here, now, and you don’t really… touch me… like that, I guess…” I mumble, tripping over my words. I sit down, my back against the stone wall.

  He rubs the heel of his palm against his eye, groaning.

  “You don’t need to answer; it’s okay. I was just wondering, is all.”

  He’s on the final A when he says, his voice low, “I’m scared.”

  “Scared?” I repeat. “Of me?”

  “No,” he shakes his head. “I’m just worried that I won’t perform, I guess. And you’re a lot more experienced than I am.”

  “Not a lot,” I rush out.

  He shrugs. “You’ve done more than I have. Hell, you’ve done all of it.”

  I’m quiet a moment, wondering how he knows, but then… “Rhys told you?”

  He nods, still refusing to look at me. “He wasn’t bragging or anything. I asked him why he cared about you so much and… yeah.”

  I blow out a breath. “It didn’t mean anything. With him, I mean. It would mean something—everything—with you.”

  He finishes our names, then runs a hand over it, blowing the loose dust off, his cheeks puffing with the force. Then he takes a step back, admiring his work. He looks over at what I’d written, a simple #3. His smile widens. After a moment, he slowly sits down next to me, his hand on my thigh. “I want to,” he says. “You have no idea how badly I want to. I think about it all the time.”

  “Do you…” I smirk, do the hand signal for jerking off. “Like my future YouTube viewers?”

  He chuckles. “I’m pretty sure you were partially present for one of the hundred times I’ve done exactly that thinking about you.”

  I go back to that moment, to the bliss that followed. “What exactly do you think about?”

  “You.”

  “But what about me? Like, where am I? What am I doing?”

  His eyes drift shut, his breaths coming out shorter, sharper. He adjusts himself quickly, licking his lips. “You’re on top,” he whispers.

  I get on my knees, carefully, while his eyes stay closed. Then I straddle his lap, whimper when I feel him pressed against my center. His hands find my waist while mine settle on his shoulders. “Like this?” I ask, and he nods, licks his lips again. “And what else?” I ask, breathless as I shift, back and forth, slow, slow, slow.

  He grasps my ass, hard, and I moan, feel the throb build in my core. Opening his eyes, his teeth clamp down on my shoulder, then bite down on my bra strap. “And this is gone.”

  I swallow, reach behind me and unclasp my bra. “Like this?” I ask, releasing the straps and letting them fall to my elbows. He rears back, his lip caught between his teeth. His fingers stroke up my arms, and then down again, taking the straps with them. I’m exposed, in public, but right now, it’s just him and me and all the scandalous thoughts racing through my head.

  His eyes are fixated on my breasts, first one, then the other. My chest heaves, lifting them, and his mouth opens, so close.

  “Connor,” I whisper, and he glances up, his eyes hooded. “Please?”

  He keeps his eyes on mine when his tongue darts out, flicks at my pointed flesh. I instinctively push my hips down, wanting more, needing all of him. “Shit,” I moan when he goes for the other nipple, this time taking the entire thing in his mouth.

  “Is this okay?” he asks.

  “Please don’t stop,” I sigh, scooting back an inch. I run my hands down his chest, his stomach, fingers playing with the band of his shorts. I hesitate a beat, not knowing if he wants to go this far…

  He makes the choice for me, his hand taking mine, guiding me beneath his shorts until my hand circles his cock. So smooth, so hard, so—

  “Move,” he says.

  “What?” I breathe out.

  “Your hand, move it up and down.” Every word is a plea, and so I do as he asks, swallow the groan that bursts from within him. He kisses me, his hands tightening on my backside as I stroke him, long and slow. I break the kiss so I can fill my lungs, but he doesn’t stop. He goes straight to my breasts again, and my back arches, inviting him, while I try to stay focused on his pleasure. And then I feel him, his fingers at the place I crave him the most. He shifts my underwear to the side, a single finger exploring the evidence of my pleasure. He doesn’t stop with my breasts, teasing me, tasting me. I pull on his hair when a single finger slides inside me, again and again, and I can’t breathe, can’t… the world is a blur, our heavy breaths the only sounds filling my ears.

  “Fuck, Ava, I’m so close. And you—you’re so fucking perfect.”

  At his words, I feel the throbbing escalate, two fingers inside me now. I ride his fingers, fucking them without shame, and continue to stroke him. His cock hardens even more, and I build, build, build, until I fly, soar over the edge.

  His groan com
es at the same time he does, his pleasure covering my fist.

  My eyes snap open to see him watching me, his mouth wide, breaths harsh, chest rising, falling. “Mmm,” he murmurs, then swallows. “Well, that sucked.”

  I laugh into his neck. “It was horrible.”

  “The worst.”

  Connor lies on his back post-bliss cleanup, stroking the loose strands of my hair while I listen to his heartbeat thump against my cheek. He asks, “Did you and Trevor have a hard time getting along at the beginning?”

  “We still have a hard time,” I joke.

  He chuckles.

  “Why do you ask?”

  “I don’t know,” he says through a sigh. “Every now and then I get this random thought in my head that my mom’s out there, you know? And she has this new family… and that new family is everything she ever wanted. Everything I wasn’t.” His voice cracks, and I lean up on my elbow so I can look down at him, at his distant eyes and the slight frown pulling on his lips.

  I run my mouth along his, but I don’t kiss him. “I hope one day you wake up and realize that the mistakes she made are her burdens, not yours. I hope that you’ll eventually understand that what she did isn’t a reflection of you—of your three-year-old self.” I’m getting worked up, so I try to take a calming breath, but I fail. “And if she is out there, I hope that one day she’ll find you, and she’ll see the same man I do. The strong, empathetic, courageous, protective man who cares so much about so many things, who wears other people’s pain as if it were his… I hope she sees you and she fucking hates herself for not being the one to raise you, to guide you into becoming that person.” My nostrils flare with my exhale. “I hope she hates herself as much as I hate her.” I grind out the last few words, my anger getting the best of me. I sob. I don’t mean to, but I do, and as promised, Connor wipes the tears away, his heavy sigh hitting my cheeks.

  “It’s okay, Ava.”

  “It’s not,” I cry out. “It’s not okay, Connor. How dare she… how dare she leave you like that—to fucking die—and leave you with these questions and these… these doubts about yourself! God, I hate her so much!”